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The purpose of this paper is to show that some current neuroscience research related to the study of decision making and mirror neurons confirm two of the intuitions that the ancient writers of Rhetoric had. First, the mixture of emotion and argumentation is essential in persuasion, because both emotions and rational arguments are needed to make decisions, as well as the arrangement of the parts of the speech, which places emotion at the beginning and end of the speech and argument in its central part, strictly conforms to the decision-making processes described by neuroscience. On the other hand, the discovery of mirror neurons confirms that classical rhetoricians were not wrong to give great importance to the operation of actio or pronuntiatio. Thus, when we witness the pronunciation of a speech, we automatically simulate gestures and expressions of the speaker in our brain and therefore, easily and unconsciously, understand how the speaker feels and what is meant to be conveyed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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In this paper we analyze, as an example of oral political discourse, the songs of two main Spanish politics parties, during the general 2008 elections. As other texts of political discourse (such as speech, interviews, meetings, posters, advertisings, etc.), these songs that accompanied the electoral propaganda are part of a public and ideological discourse aimed at the election of a candidate (perlocutive object). The elector voting for the candidate must believe that he is the best option available. Thus, the candidate's discourse is directed so the elector knows that the candidate and his party are the best options (legitimation), while it presents the opposing candidate as the worst one (delegitimation). The results of the analysis show that these strategies, quite typical in political discourse, have some new elements such as their resemblance to commercial advertising, i.e. the testimonials by famous people. Even if the political songs are a traditional genre with conventional communicative aims (propaganda and persuasion), they display some typical features in contemporary and postmodern communication: colloquiality, informality, "carnivalization", syncretism and hibridation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In a passage of El Buscón, Francisco de Quevedo made fun of Jerónimo de Pasamonte's manuscript Vida y trabajos. When Alonso Fernández de Avellaneda wrote his aprocryphal Quijote, he responded to the Quevedo's jest, proving that Avellaneda and Pasamonte were one and the same person. Our conclusions also permit us to establish a date for El Buscón. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]